Social Media Minute: Facebook 'Dislike' Scam, No Tracking Bills

Social media moves so fast, it's hard to keep up. Here are the week's top stories in scan-friendly format:

"Dislike Button" Scam Circulating on Facebook

Online Firms Join Forces to Battle Privacy Law

Jive Software Enables Greater Interactivity with Facebook

Twitter Surpasses 300 Million Users, Perhaps

'Dislike Button' Scam Circulating on Facebook

Facebook is an online destination where many feel safe. Because the service is made up of messages, pictures and updates from our family and friends, Facebook users are at ease when on the service. Unfortunately that means that scams and even malware can be easily distributed by spammers online.

There's an epidemic going on inside Facebook, involving a dislike button and the mistaken presence of such a feature. The spam scam works like this: A friend on your wall says that Facebook has implemented a "dislike" button and to click on a link to enable it. The event then puts JavaScript into the address bar and executes it, sending out a message to all your Facebook followers and therefore repeating the cycle.

Have you seen the dislike button scam? This is a good reason to be skeptical online, even on seemingly safe sites such as Facebook. Just like your email inbox or on other sites, spammers are reaching out to wherever people congregate online.

Online Firms Join Forces to Battle Privacy Law

There is legislation pending at the various levels of government in the United States that will impede the way major websites interact with their users, in the name of privacy. The dozen or so companies, which are commonly seen as competitors, have joined up to counter a California measure that will inhibit the types of user information that can be legally shared. SB 242, according to the likes of Google, Facebook and Twitter, "gratuitously singles out social networking sites without demonstration of any harm."

At the heart of this matter is how companies choose to track and trade information on how online users interact with websites while online. Also called a "do not track" bill in the US Congress, legislators wish to make it possible for online users to opt-out of tracking and therefore limit how online marketers can track and pitch ads to users based on their browsing behaviors.

SB 242 in California, as the online powerhouses go on to say, inhibits free speech and will damage California's thriving online commerce industry in a time where the state cannot afford such a disruption. Even though online tracking does sound scary, online ads make the Internet free in many cases, including your most likely used online resources such as Facebook and favorite news sites.

Jive Software Enables Greater Interactivity with Facebook

Jive Software is used inside businesses to create internal communities where colleagues can use the power of social networking inside their enterprise. The company released the Jive Facebook Connector to integrate Facebook communities, fan pages, and general content from Facebook to merge internal communities with those found on Facebook.

Jive creates online communities inside organizations where discussions, document sharing, polls and blogging take place. The problem that the new Connector solves is bridging the gap between meaningful conversations taking place on internal (Jive) and external (Facebook) channels. The Connector by Jive allows content generated in a Jive customer community to be shared and replicated on Facebook and vice versa.

Jive is going forward with an IPO, and adding features to give its products more relevancy should be expected. in fact, I expect more integration with external social networks to be announced from Jive Software.

Twitter Surpasses 300 Million Users, Perhaps

Twitter is a hot social networking tool and perhaps a better way to describe is by calling it a communication medium. Judging by new numbers from TwopCharts, there are now just over 300 million users who have registered for Twitter accounts. Also, the service is creating about 8.5 accounts per second and, going further, there are roughly 30,000 accounts created every hour.

According to Twitter's business page, it is signing up 460,000 accounts daily and reports roughly 200 million accounts created so far. ReadWriteWeb tried to test the TopCharts numbers by creating a new account and that account was assigned a user number greater than 300 million. However, even if 300 million people have signed up for Twitter accounts, active engagement is another variable. Many users sign up for the service, try it a few times and never return.

Regardless of the numbers, 300 million users is a huge accomplishment for the San Francisco-based service. Twitter has reached mass appeal and is a household term in the United States, just a few years after its debut at South By Southwest.